


back to our cocoon

by foxmagpie



Series: stay gold: prompts [4]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Romance, Birthday, Birthday Sex, Established Relationship, F/M, Minor Violence, POV Rio (Good Girls), Spooning, Tumblr Prompt, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:26:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28810338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmagpie/pseuds/foxmagpie
Summary: When Rio has a bad night at work, he's anxious to get back home to Beth.
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Series: stay gold: prompts [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1903069
Comments: 16
Kudos: 137





	back to our cocoon

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr Prompt: Finally home after a hard day + "You smell nice"
> 
> This prompt is technically set in the [salty sweet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28313628) universe, but you don't need to have read that fic to understand this one at all!

The street is dark when he pulls onto it, canopied from the moonlight by the sycamore trees growing along the sidewalks, all the houses tucked back and out of easy view by long stretches of yard and privacy hedges. The G Wagen rumbles, too loud in the quiet night, in this quiet neighborhood, and Rio rubs at his eyes.

Shit, he’s been living here for over a year and sometimes he still feels alien in it, questioning how he ended up living a life where all laws are arbitrary except those outlined by the Rosedale Park Homeowners Association, but he feels it more acutely on nights like these. 

Brutal nights. 

Bloodstained nights.

He hears a gurgle of water from a faulty sprinkler kick on through the open window, and then he hears the echo of Axel choking on his blood, face white and eyes wild. Sees the knife glinting on the dirty ground of the alley next to his pulsing body, abandoned by whoever had ambushed him and taken off with the duffle bag. 

(A mystery with no leads, according to Mick—at least not yet. But there was tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and Rio feels a headache throbbing at the back of his skull with how much this was gonna fuck up the next week.)

Abruptly, a cat darts out into the street. Rio swerves. Slams on his breaks. For a second, he sees nothing. His heart pounds in his chest. Then, there’s a blur of white leaping away into the inky blackness, safe and intact, and he exhales. 

The kid was gonna be alright, he tells himself, easing his foot back onto the gas. They got him to Katarina quick. She had steady hands. She’d pulled some of his boys through worse. 

(Lost others from less, too. But Rio doesn’t think about that.)

Still, the reassurances hadn’t done shit for Axel’s girl, a skinny li’l pale thing in a loose dress that would’ve hidden her bump if her hand didn’t keep falling to smooth her fingers over it. As she paced frantically, babbling questions a mile a minute, the strap kept falling down off her shoulder, too big on her otherwise lanky frame. It’d reminded Rio of Jane wearing Emma’s hand-me-downs, and shit, Rio thought. When did they all start looking so young?

Absently, Rio rubs at the scratch the girl’d left on his neck—an insignificant casualty in the scheme of things, but a reminder nonetheless. It never got easier, delivering the news, being in the shock radius of devastated mothers, sisters, wives.

His thoughts slide to Elizabeth.

He wonders if she’s still awake. 

Glancing at the dashboard, he squints at the glow of the clock. It’s later—much later—than he promised, but it was a possibility, maybe, considering the circumstances. 

But he doesn’t even know if he wants her to be up. He’s so fucking tired, and there’s something tempting about slipping into bed with her and just sinking against her softness in the silence, about saving everything for the morning.

He turns into the brick driveway, headlights beaming off the perfectly trimmed four-inch grass (okay, perfect might be stretching it—it  _ had _ been cut by Kenny, Elizabeth’s idea of a fair punishment for the boy sneaking out to chug beers in some neighborhood kid’s garage, Rio’s idea of a fair bullet point on the kid’s list of responsibilities, but he wasn’t going to make a fuss about it—Kenny sucked at getting the corners anyway). 

When he kills the engine, he looks up at the second story and sees a glow coming from their bedroom window. She  _ was _ up. He sucks his teeth at the same time that something in him loosens at the thought. 

At the door, he presses his thumb to the fingerprint lock. In the foyer, he deposits his keys in the ugly misshapen key bowl Jane had made him last Father’s Day. At the base of the stairs, his eyes catch on the oven light at the end of the hall, casting a shine on the cake stand Elizabeth's pulled out of the cupboard to fill with a double chocolate monstrosity that he’s sure had caused at least two meltdowns when she’d told the kids they couldn’t eat it—not yet. 

Not without him. 

His stomach growls. 

He’d missed out on the tamales tonight too—his ma’s recipe. 

But it’d all still be there tomorrow, he thinks, climbing the stairs, and so would he. 

Not everyone would be so lucky. 

(He’ll be fine, he tells himself again, and the recognition that it’s even something he  _ has _ to tell himself niggles. Sure, it’s been a minute since something like this—but it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to it. He’s seen worse. Done worse. And hell, death’s been a fixture of his life since he was a kid and his pop went to work one morning and didn’t come back that evening. This isn’t new to him—none of it.

But he peeks into all the kids’ rooms on the way to bed, just to check. Just to see them breathing steady and lost to dreams. He lingers in Marcus’s room for an extra beat, ambles over to his bedside, smoothing over his son’s brow with a gentle press of his thumb. He blinks and suddenly it’s ten years ago and he’s standing over his crib, Marcus’s tiny fist wrapped around Rio’s finger like a vice. Fuck, when did he get so big?) 

He braces himself before turning the knob of his own bedroom door. He doesn’t know what’s going to be waiting for him on the other side tonight—exasperation, relief, anger. He was supposed to be home for dinner. He’d promised and failed, and she’d been left to come up with a lie for the kids, to make excuses for his absence. 

But when he steps into the room, he’s met with silence. 

Elizabeth’s passed out on the bed on top of the covers wearing nothing but a green silk robe—the one he’d got her just because. She’s coiled up on her side, knees bent, back to him, and Rio can see a peek of her pale pink ass and her cunt exposed from the robe riding up.

If she’s mad, she must be saving it for tomorrow, he thinks. Tonight it looks like she’d tried to wait up to welcome him home. 

He runs a hand over his hair. Shit, he really doesn’t know how this was his life. How he got so lucky. He’d put up with every dumb fuck rule the HOA could come up with just to walk in the door to her every night. To wake up beside her every morning. 

He wants nothing more than to crawl into bed with her now, to pull her to him and bury his face in the crook of her neck, but not yet. Twisting the knob of the lamp, he gently kicks off his shoes and pads into the en suite. 

First, he strips, examining his clothes closely underneath the lights in the bathroom. He’s clean—mostly—but there’s blotches of blood on the sleeve of his button-up, and he can feel the ghost of Axel’s hand gripping his wrist as they loaded him up in the car. 

Throat tightening, he pushes the thought away. 

He turns the shower on as hot as it goes, lets the scalding water pound against his skin and burn off a sheen of sweat, wash away this whole fucked up night. He’s raw afterward, aching, eyelids heavy. 

Finally, he thinks, rehooking his towel and flicking off the light. The night is over. 

When he makes his way to the bed in the dark and crawls on top of it, mattress dipping, Elizabeth stirs. She reaches behind her and pats around until she finds him, hand squeezing at his damp skin as he curls around her. She’s so fucking soft, so fucking warm, Rio’s eyes flutter shut immediately. Spooning her, he exhales and unclenches, letting go. 

“Hey, mama.”

She reaches her arm back, runs her fingers over his close-cropped hair, squeezing his earlobe gently on the way—a thing she likes to do, he’s never figured out why, but the familiarity of the gesture makes him sigh into her.

“Happy birthday, baby,” she murmurs, voice still thick with sleep. 

Rio presses his lips to her neck, breathes her in. He waits a beat, then whispers: “You smell good.”

“Mmm. I didn’t do anything different.”

“I know.” 

He nuzzles into her hair, losing himself in the sweet scent of pear and jasmine. Elizabeth pats his head in appreciation, then slides her hand down the arm he has hooked over her, tracing the pads of her fingers over his knuckles before she links her small fingers with his. 

“It feels late.”

“It is,” he confirms. “Past four.”

“What happened? Is everything okay?” 

_ It is now,  _ he wants to say, thumb rubbing against the smooth silk of her robe at her stomach, but it’s not true and he feels her rousing, concerned, so instead he settles on promising, “It will be.” 

He can’t pass it to her. Not yet. Not when she wrote out the recipe to her banana muffins for Axel’s girl last month, just ‘cause she heard he liked ‘em. Not when she’d already started knitting them a small yellow blanket.

And not when he knows she’d think of Axel’s girl sitting home alone, when he knows that’ll mutate into thinking about how maybe that might be  _ her _ one day exactly like he’s been stewing on all night. 

Right now all she knows is that something went wrong on a drop. Tomorrow she’ll know the details. Know about the knife. The blood. Axel. 

Tonight, though, he just wants to cocoon with her, for everything outside of the two of them tucked away in their house to disappear.

Before she can ask any more follow-up questions, he kisses the hinge of her jaw like he knows she likes. Elizabeth makes a contented noise in the back of her throat, squeezing his fingers between hers. She wriggles her hips. The robe shifts, sliding further up so that he can feel his cock thickening against the curve of her ass.

“You know, it’s not tomorrow until you fall asleep,” she tells him, sliding his hand lower on her belly. “So it’s still technically your birthday.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asks, playing along. 

“I believe I made you a promise…”

“Mmm,” he confirms, remembering that she’d agreed to let him tie her up like she was giving it to him as a gift, like she thought that masked how much she was into the idea. But that plan required releasing her, letting her warmth disappear from his body—and he doesn’t know if he can do it. If he can let go of her right now. “What if I wanted something else?”

“Something else, huh?” 

For a second, he doesn’t answer, just dips his hand lower and cups her cunt through her robe as his other hand reaches around to slide underneath the silk to squeeze gently at her breast. 

“What if I want you just like this?”

“I suppose that would be alright,” she teases as he pushes the robe aside at the apex of her thighs. She shifts, opening for him, and with her hand still gripping over the top of his, he rubs his fingers through her folds.

Rio sinks his teeth into her neck when he slips two fingers inside of her wet heat and Elizabeth gasps, shifting to grip his wrist and arch her back. He moves slowly, leisurely, thrusting in and out of her with no real hurry as she mewls contented little noises that he commits to memory.

“Christopher,” she whines, nails digging into skin when he finally grinds the heel of his hand against her clit. 

“Elizabeth,” he answers her, pushing into her deeper.

She grunts as he nudges her over the edge, and he feels her toes curling against his shins at the foot of the bed at the same time that he feels the flutter inside of her.

“Let me touch you,” she pants when he pulls out, circling the softened pads of his fingers over her sensitive nub at the same time that he presses the head of his cock against her folds.

“Wanna fuck you now,” he murmurs in her ear, voice hoarse. “Wanna feel you all around me.”

Elizabeth moans long and slow as he shifts downward, adjusting his angle to push into her. She sheaths him, her cunt tight and hot and perfect, and for a second he stills, sighing as she stretches and clenches around him. She twists, craning her neck. He kisses her. It’s gentle at first, almost timid—like if he tastes too much of her at once he might get drunk. Then he rocks into her, his thrusts shallow, and her jaw falls open against his mouth. He feels her breath fan across his face and if it’s possible, he pulls her still closer against him, every inch of their bodies slotted against each other.

“Fuck, Elizabeth,” he breathes, pushing deeper with a long stroke, “you feel—so good.”

The words aren’t enough, but he doesn’t know how to tell her she’s the only thing tethering him to the world right now. As they move together in a rhythm, his nerves spark in pleasure. All he can hear is their ragged breaths, and he feels his heart pounding in his chest—alive, alive, alive. 

He kisses her again, but this time it’s bruising. Desperate. Like he knows exactly what he has with her. Like he knows exactly how easy it is to lose. 

Today, he’s older than his father ever was. His son is the same age as Rio was when he lost him, but Rio’s still here. 

He’s here and somehow, inexplicably, he got everything he never knew he wanted, and fuck if that isn't the most terrifying thing he's ever experienced.

When he finishes, they don’t disentangle immediately. Her hair is damp against her neck and Rio pushes it aside to kiss her, tasting the salt on her skin. 

For a moment, the quiet envelopes them. 

Then Elizabeth shifts, turning so that she can face him in the darkness. She traces a hand over his face, finger trailing from his temple, down his cheekbone, landing at his chin to swip her thumb against his bottom lip. He lets his eyes fall shut. He senses her looking at him, reading him, and he can feel the question poised at the tip of her tongue. But he thinks she knows, knows he isn’t ready, because she swallows it, saying nothing. 

“What’d you tell the kids?” he asks, curling a finger in her hair. 

“That you were taking care of your sick friend Mr. Bunbury again.”

A lopsided grin appears on his face. “You know they’re gonna read that play in high school and catch you out, yeah?”

Elizabeth hums, contemplative. 

“That’s a problem for another day,” she announces decisively.

And that sounds good, Rio thinks, feeling sleep tug at him. Save it for another day. 

They'd figure it out. 

They had time. 

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'ed so all mistakes are mine and mine alone!
> 
> Title from Milky Chance's song "Cocoon"


End file.
